District Sales & Operations Manager (Designate)

District Sales and Operations Manager Designate – WHSmith Covering: Scotland/NI/NE District

Our goal is to make every one of life’s journeys better and at the heart of this are our people, customers, and partners. As District Sales and Operations Manager, you will lead a team of Store Managers across various formats, driving success through your leadership and ensuring continued growth. Your role is crucial to delivering operational excellence and fostering a high-performing culture that places people, customers, and profitability at the core of everything we do.

What being a District Sales and Operations Manager is all about:

• People: Delivering exceptional people performance metrics. These underpin the plan for your district and put people at the heart of your strategy. Leading and inspiring through coaching, challenging and empowering your Store managers. You will create the conditions for your team to be their very best, with continuous development that elevates their strengths and potential. Developing and executing a robust talent strategy that supports cross-functional roles, nurturing future leaders and ensuring that there are clear succession plans in place. Embracing diversity, fostering inclusive environments where wellbeing is prioritised and you are a role model to others. You will be responsible for ensuring stores operate within legal and safety standards, including compliance with the Working Time Directive, Right to Work regulations, and HMRC guidelines. Creating a psychologically safe environment that encourages openness, idea sharing, and engagement. Prioritising communication and implementing a District Engagement plan that inspires and positively impacts colleagues.
• Plan: You will lead a culture of commercial excellence through effective coaching, management and monitoring. You'll be able to grow spend per passenger in rail, ATV and transactions in other formats, driving sales, adapting to seasonality and changing customer missions. Tackling performance variability across stores with a results-driven approach, narrowing performance gaps through decisive action-oriented leadership. Taking accountability for ensuring safe and legal compliance is understood and delivered by your team coaching and empowering them to engage with support functions to achieve everyday compliance. Overseeing operational targets and service level agreements with partners, ensuring they are met and positioning the business as a top-tier partner for growth opportunities. Being accountable for costs, ensuring that expenditure is within budget, targets are met and savings achieved where a risk to profit.
• Customer: You are obsessed with the customer experience. Role modelling the importance of a world class customer journey. Your team feel your passion and emulate it in their stores with their people and customers. You will ensure store activities and brand standards are executed to the highest level through clear communication and regular validation processes. You are able to influence decisions that benefit both the customer and profitability, using data and tools effectively. You'll empower your team to adopt this mindset, promoting a culture of data-driven decision-making. Creating a psychologically safe environment that encourages openness, idea sharing, and engagement. Prioritising communication and implementing a District Engagement plan that inspires and positively impacts colleagues. You will gain a deep understanding of the market where your stores operate, and tailor your approach to meet the unique needs of each customer, attracting future customers and driving higher conversion rates.

About you:

• Previous experience of leading teams in a multi-site environment
• Comfortable being accountable for multi-million pounds of sales
• Expertise in the retail industry and trends
• Experience in budget management
• Strong people leader and able to engage and communicate at all levels
• Ability to influence and collaborate with stakeholders and customers
• Commercial understanding and able to analyse data and implement plans to achieve growth
• Ability to travel round the district on a weekly basis

How we reward our teams:

We know you’ll work hard to make WH Smith a success and our customers happy, so as well as your salary, pension scheme, holidays (Management - 33 days including bank holidays) (Hourly paid 6.6 weeks including bank holidays) and employee discounts (up to 50%), we’ll reward you with a range of deals from retail partners that will help you save money and make memories, whether a delicious meal, an adventurous day out, or tickets to see the latest blockbuster. Whatever the future brings, our Employee Assistance Programme will support you with help and guidance for your wellbeing whether physical, mental or financial.

About us:

WHSmith has a remarkable heritage and we are growing particularly in our airports, hospitals, rail stations and motorway services. Our aim is simple, to offer our products to everyone on any of life’s journeys. Our InMotion brand, a leading digital accessories business, continues to grow and develop, offering an amazing customer experience with all the latest tech. We have created great partnerships with the likes of M&S and Costa Coffee, ‘broaden our offering’ to our customers throughout the UK. That’s why, as we continue our journey, our aim is simple: to make every one of life’s journeys better! At WHSmith, we’re all about creating an inclusive and welcoming workplace where everyone can be themselves and do their best. No matter your background, age, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, race or ethnicity, marital status, religion, sex, sexual orientation or anything else that makes you, you—you’re welcome here. We’re also open to flexible working where possible, so if that’s something you need, let’s chat. And if you need any adjustments during the selection process, just let our Talent Acquisition team know—we’re happy to help!